From Chapter 2:
Christ is the Divine Light that the darkness cannot overcome; and, though every priest is alter Christus, another Christ, whose duty is to teach the divine truth by word and act, a priest is not God, and so he can fail in his duty. As a priest’s love for Christ grows colder, he teaches less of the divine truth; and thus, it can be said that the “sun,” which symbolizes the Divine Light, grows dimmer. And, when priests in large number teach falsehood or consent to it, then it can be said that the “sun” has turned so dark as to seem covered with haircloth woven from a black goat. Three times, Christ asked Peter, “Do you love me?” And three times, He commanded him, “Feed my sheep.” [Jn. 21:15-17] The Truth is the food for Christ’s followers; the Little Lamb is that food. Arianism denied the divinity of Jesus, and so it sought to starve the “sheep” to death. In Ezekiel 34:8, 12, the Lord says,
“…and because my shepherds did not look after my sheep, but pastured themselves
and did not pasture my sheep…I will rescue them [the sheep] from every
place where they were scattered when it was cloudy and dark.”
Chapter 12:
The following excerpts, taken from the writings of God’s “own servants
the prophets,” give the signification of the symbolical term “mountain”:
Then he [the angel] said to me, “This is the Lord’s message to Zerubbabel:
Not by an army, nor by might, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts.
What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you are but a plain.”
[Zech. 4:6-7]
I will help you, says the Lord; your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
I will make of you a threshing sledge, sharp, new and double edged, to
thresh the mountains and crush them, to make the hills like chaff. [Is.
41:14-15]
While you [Nebuchadnezzar] looked at the statue, a stone which was hewn
from a mountain without a hand’s being put to it, struck its iron and tile
feet, breaking them in pieces. The iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold
all crumbled at once, fine as the chaff on the threshing floor in summer,
and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace. But the stone that
struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth…The
God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed or delivered
up to another people; rather, it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms
and put an end to them, and it shall stand forever. That is the meaning
of the stone you saw hewn from the mountain without a hand’s being put
to it, which broke in pieces the tile, iron, bronze, silver, and gold.
[Dn. 2:34-35 & 44-45]
Behold! I come against you, destroying mountain, destroyer of the entire
earth, says the Lord; I will stretch forth my hand against you, roll you
down over the cliffs, and make you a burnt mountain. [Jer. 51:25]
In the excerpts from Zechariah and Jeremiah, the Lord addresses Babylon
as “mountain.” In Jeremiah, the term, “burnt mountain,” according to the
context, may be understood as “destroyed mountain”; and the term, “destroying
mountain” may be understood as “burning mountain.”
This “burning mountain,” which arose in the Middle East, is a subtle allusion
to the “great mountain burning with fire” in Apocalypse 8:8, the one which
was “cast out [meaning, “cast out from the heaven”] unto the sea”; and
that “sea” is the one from which the “beast” will arise in the future,
the same “sea” that was once territory of the Roman empire, namely, the
regions of North Africa and the Middle East. For this reason, the color
of the seven-headed dragon in Chapter 12 should be translated not as “red,”
but as “flame-colored” or “fire-colored”; for the “dragon” symbolizes not
only the ruler of this world, but also his kingdom, which will be the culmination
of the “burning mountain” in Chapter 8.
From Chapter 17:
Historically, the beast, in the general sense, was continuous from the
Egyptian to the Roman Empire. In the special sense, Satan was the animus,
or soul, and mastermind of each beast. The second beast conquered and replaced
the first, the third the second, etc. The sixth beast was the Roman Empire.
When the throne of Caesar ceased to be occupied by a pagan, the head of
the beast was lost, and Satan could not replace it. Hence, the continuity
of the historical beast was ended.
This, in no way, means that paganism was completely eliminated from the
Roman Empire, as the laments of the early Fathers of the Church so often
attested. The head of the sixth beast received the blow of the sword, but
not every other part of its body. Some paganistic elements or anti-theistic
tendencies remained.
The two symbols, “beast” and “head,” are now clearly understood: when the general population or society is anti-theistic in belief and practice, then an incomplete “beast” exists; and when an anti-theistic individual becomes the supreme ruler of that “beast,” then a “head” for the “beast” has come into existence, and so the “beast” is complete, it is a whole “beast.” The history books have recorded many “beasts,” but John wrote only about those that come or would come into contact with all or almost all of God’s people. This explains why the “Burning Mountain” in Chapter 8 was not depicted as a beast with a head, but it will become a considerable part of the seventh beast, as described in Chapter 17.
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